Introduces this issue on genocide & ethnic cleansing in Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, & East Timor, focusing on moral & political issues that distinguish these modern forms of holocaust from the Shoah. After lamenting the major powers' failure to intervene in minimizing or preventing these tragedies, it is suggested that honest reporting on the new killing fields must construct a descriptively simple narration, eschew easy moralizing, & mandate governments' role in stopping the slaughter. An in-depth analysis of the "language of slaughter" reveals that, while earlier authors such as Joseph Conrad & Ernest Hemingway could capture the horrors of combat in direct & simple rhetoric, chroniclers of contemporary genocide reflect spontaneity, immediacy, & self-reflection. J. Sadler
Das Themenheft befasst sich mit der historischen Migrationsforschung. Die Beiträge dokumentieren historische Probleme der Integration von Zuwanderern sowie die Ausgrenzung und Vertreibung von Bevölkerungsgruppen in internationaler Perspektive. (IAB). Inhaltsverzeichnis: Jochen Oltmer: Einführung; Magnus Mörner: Seventeenth-century immigration in Sweden; Walter D. Kamphoefner: Deutsch-Amerikaner: Musterknaben der Einwanderung?; Steve Hochstadt: Vertreibung aus Deutschland und Überleben in Shanghai: jüdische NS-Vertriebene in China; Hans-Ake Persson: Settling the peace, the Cold War, and the ethnic cleansing of the Germans from Central and Eastern Europe; Arune Liucija Arbusauskaite: The Soviet policy towards the 'Kaliningrad Germans' 1945-1951; Henk L. Wesseling: Migration and decolonization: the case of the Netherlands; Michael Bommes: Zweites DFG-Graduiertenkolleg "Migration im modernen Europa" am IMIS eröffnet; Hans-Joachim Hoffmann-Nowotny: Aspekte der internationalen Migration.
THE DECADE SINCE THE 1989 FALL OF COMMUNISM HAS BEEN FULL OF UNFULFILLED EXPECTATIONS. FAR FROM OPENING THE WAY FOR INNOVATIVE PROJECTS AIMED AT COMBINING MARKETS WITH EGALITARIAN REDISTRIBUTION, THE SOVIET COLLAPSE LED AT ITS BEST TO THE CONSOLIDATION OF LIBERAL DEMOCRACIES IN CENTRAL EUROPE. AT ITS WORST IT BROUGHT CASINO CAPITALISM AND MAFIA-STYLE POLITICS TO RUSSIA AND ETHNIC CLEANSING TO THE BALKANS. THE PRINCIPAL LESSON OF POSTCOMMUNISM, THEREFORE, IS THE NEED TO RETRIEVE AND UPDATE WHAT REMAINS UNSURPASSABLE IN THE SOCIALIST VISION. ONLY WHEN WE BEGIN TO REALIZE THAT MULTICULTURALISM IS NOT POSTSOCIALISM WILL IT BE POSSIBLE TO LEARN FROM THE PAST AND REMAIN OPEN TO THE FUTURE.
Every war brings its share of missing persons, whether military or civilian. And every individual reported missing is then sought by a family anxiously awaiting news of their loved one. These families cannot be left in such a state of anguish. For the truth, however painful it may be, is preferable to the torture of uncertainty and false hope. In Bosnia and Herzegovina civilians were especially affected by a conflict in which belligerents pursued a policy of ethnic cleansing by expelling minority groups from certain regions. Thousands of people who disappeared in combat or were thrown into prison, summarily executed or massacred, are still being sought by their families.
In his article, "Schindler's Fate: Genocide, Ethnic Cleansing, and Population Transfers," Robert Hayden combines comparative history, political commentary, and amoral realism. In the process, he presents a number of arguments with which it is difficult to disagree, but also many that are provocative and, indeed, offensive. Because Hayden makes so many arguments in this piece (both primary, secondary, and parenthetical; explicit and implicit; open and disguised) my critique will not follow the organization of his paper. Rather, it will challenge Hayden's article on three counts: 1) its factual accuracy; 2) its lack of reference to existing literature on the topic; and 3) the logic, validity, and moral consequences of its arguments.
Explores the effects of nationalist sentiment on motherhood, arguing that nationalist propaganda urges mothers to support war & reproduce to increase the population of the nation. The case of war in the former Yugoslavia illustrates how the church & state usurped control of women's bodies by supporting nationalist antiabortion movements, even to the degree of accepting rape-related pregnancies. Patriarchal constructions are seen in the objectification of women in relation to the notion of rape as ethnic cleansing; ie, only the male seed determines the identity of a child that a women must passively agree to carry. The psychological trauma caused by wartime rape is discussed, as well as the UN's responsibility for it. M. Nichols-Wagner
THIS ARTICLE SEEKS TO PLACE THE CONFLICT IN PRESENT-DAY BOSNIA WITHIN A HISTORICAL CONTEXT. IT DOES THIS BY COMPARISON WITH OTHER AREAS WITHIN THE FORMER OTTOMAN EMPIRE, PARTICULARLY WHERE EMERGING NATIONAL MOVEMENTS HAVE CONTENDED FOR THE SAME TERRITORY. ETHNIC CLEANSING AND GENOCIDE HAVE RESULTED ON SEVERAL OCCASIONS. BUT VICTIMS HAVE - USUALLY ON A SMALLER SCALE - ALSO BECOME PERPETRATORS. PART OF THE PROBLEM, IT IS ARGUED, IS THE VERY CONCEPT OF THE NATION-STATE, WHICH DEMANDS PEOPLE-HOMOGENEITY AND, THEREFORE, EITHER THE FORCIBLE ASSIMILATION OR REMOVAL OF COMPETING "NATIONAL" GROUPS. A RETHINKING FOUNDED ON PLURALISM, DIVERSITY AND FEDERAL STRUCTURES IS POSITED AS THE BEST HOPE FOR THE FURTHER AVOIDANCE OF SUCH CONFLICTS.
In a report released on September 16, 1993, Amnesty International came up with an apt description of the current human rights situation in Zaire as consisting of "violence against democracy." In a violent backlash against the democratization process, the regime of President Mobutu Sese Seko has plunged the country into "its worst human rights crisis since the end of the civil war in the early 1960s." More than 5,000 people have been killed and more than 100,000 displaced in ethnic cleansing in the Shaba and North Kivu provinces. Moreover, repeated looting, extortion, and other acts of violence by Mobutu's army have endangered the lives of millions of people all over the country, particularly in the major cities.
The desire to belong in a individual culture means to possess a clear vision for the world, a road map that guides its followers towards the proper understanding of the planet's past present and future. An established mythology of apparent national identities in the Balkans is somewhat unnaturally reinforced to justify conflicts between religious and ethnic groups, caused as a result of the national identities intertwined among themselves, an element essentially more influential than existence of national identities. For centuries Christians and Muslims in the Balkans have been living in peace, however a few Balkan Societies continue to use violence, national extremism, xenophobia as well as a contemporary practice to solve their problems. A legitimate question can be raised in relation to how common is religious influence used to cause violent and armed conflicts as compared to violence originating from ethnic cleansing, control over territory, political ideology and regional hegemony?
In this paper we look at the background of the Kosovo problem, its intensification since the 1980s in particular, the response of the international community leading finally to bombing. We also look at whether the international community was able to achieve its objective of preventing ethnic violence and cleansing. Yugoslavia had been a mosaic of ethnic groups with long histories of conflict but without segregated housing patterns. While the other ethnic groups feared Serbian domination in Yugoslavia where the Serbs were the largest ethnic group, the Serbs feared domination in the regions where they were in a minority. Ethnic conflict was aggravated by the economic crisis in the 80s which widened economic disparities, and also because of differences about the relative importance of the state and the market in economic management. The Serbs favoured a more controlled economy and the others a more liberal economy. The conflict in Kosovo flared up with the Serbs trying to limit Kosovar autonomy; the Kosovars retaliated by demanding greater autonomy initially and independence later. The resulting armed conflict led to considerable killing. The international community leaned heavily on the Serbs and their leader Milosevic to stop the repression, but failed. Ultimately the western countries had to resort to bombing. While this resulted in the capitulation by the Serbs, the problem was not solved as now the Kosovars started purging the Serbs. If the objective was to preserve a multi-ethnic Yugoslavia, the Western powers seemed to have failed.
The United Nations embraced the doctrine of "Responsibility to Protect" (R2P) in 2005, which states that it is a shared responsibility of the international community to protect peoples from the atrocities of war crimes, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. Regarding Myanmar, the UN Human Rights Council claimed there were gross violations of human rights and international law in Myanmar's Rakhine state. Also, the UN Independent Fact-Finding Mission found evidence of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes, and accordingly requested that the international community employ R2P to protect the Rohingya people. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights acknowledged the clearance operation that occurred on 25 August 2017 at the hands of the Myanmar military regime was a "textbook example of ethnic cleansing". In spite of this, the international community has taken no effective measures to protect the Rohingya community from what was an "entirely predictable" act of genocide. This paper is a qualitative investigation, a review of possible strategic reasons for why the international community has failed to protect the Rohingya. The paper relies on secondary scholarly literature, policy records, UN, government, and NGO reports, grey literature sources, and online materials. ASEAN's non-interference strategy, the OIC's dependency on diplomacy, the EU's priority for the hybrid democratic transition of Myanmar, the UN's political dialogue strategy, and the UN Security Council's structural weaknesses are obstacles to the international community preventing genocide in Myanmar. This study contributes to understanding the strategies of ASEAN, OIC, EU, UN, ICC, and the ICJ in relation to the Rohingya issue. It examines the chances of these organisations championing R2P, and also considers whether the Rohingya crisis is too intractable or difficult to resolve under current arrangements. (Asian Aff/GIGA)
ifferent citizens from other former Yugoslav republics who were permanent residents on their territory when the new citizenship regime came into effect. In their extreme manifestation, citizenship laws and practices have also been used as a subtle, but nonetheless powerful tool for ethnic cleansing. The deprivation of citizenship, and the subsequent loss of basic social and economic rights, has been quite effective in forcing a sizable number of individuals to leave their habitual places of residence and move either to 'their' kin states or abroad. The break-up of Yugoslavia and the other two multinational federations meant that millions literally went to bed as full-fledged citizens and woke up as individuals with questionable status.
Destruction and human remains investigates a crucial question frequently neglected in academic debate in the fields of mass violence and genocide studies: what is done to the bodies of the victims after they are killed? In the context of mass violence, death does not constitute the end of the executors' work. Their victims' remains are often treated and manipulated in very specific ways, amounting in some cases to true social engineering, often with remarkable ingenuity. To address these seldom-documented phenomena, this volume includes chapters based on extensive primary and archival research to explore why, how and by whom these acts have been committed through recent history. Interdisciplinary in scope, Destruction and human remains will appeal to readers interested in the history and implications of genocide and mass violence, including researchers in anthropology, sociology, history, politics and modern warfare
